Game gripes... the little things that game developers do that grind your gears..

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I know moddability varies immensely based on what engine you use and stuff,
but when a PC developer releases a PC game without making even a cursory effort to include mod support (i.e. basic stuff like exposing the monster/weapon statistics for modification, putting the text and art assets in an editable format, etc) I feel like they're missing out on one of the best things about Computery Games.

(This is a little bigger than a "little thing", but it's still my most frequent gripe =P).

Support for my all-pepperjack-cheese food bank charity drive has been lukewarm at best.

Checkpoint only saves. Especially checkpoints in stealth games. The whole design reeks of "I know better than you." It is moderately more acceptable in platformers and completely unacceptable in open world games.

Also, terrible key-binding that was clearly not play-tested. I'm looking at you Shank.

Checkpoint only saves. Especially checkpoints in stealth games. The whole design reeks of "I know better than you." It is moderately more acceptable in platformers and completely unacceptable in open world games.
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Uncharted 3 pissed me off with this. There is a level where you sneak through an airfield with a silenced pistol. At some point I messed up and got spotted. The game had already saved itself after my screw up, and there was no option to restart the level, so I was stuck going guns-blazing for the rest of the mission.

Another thing I hate is that it seems like developers today care more about targeting and bringing in non-gamers than they do about pleasing the fans they already have. Take the last Zelda, for example. I've already beaten over a dozen Zelda games, so why are you stopping me to explain how bombs work, or what my heart meter means? Why not make a game expecting the person playing to be a gamer, and not a casual or non-gamer who probably won't even finish it? You shouldn't have to tell the player to use the mouse to look around, or use the left stick to move. If they do not fucking know that already, then they have no business being here.

"What were we talking about? Pegasuses, pegasii, that's horses with wings. This motherf*cker got a sword that talks to him. Motherf*cker live in places that don't exist, it comes with a map. My God."

"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."

In Crysis 2 sometimes you have to crawl using the mouse buttons. MOUSE 1 - CRAWL. Then you get a new message: MOUSE 2 - CRAWL. Repeat three or four times. PRESS SPACE - STAND.
The worst are those in which your character is knocked to the ground and you're instructed three times to press SPACE to activate the defibrilator. You can press it only when you're prompted, otherwise it doesn't work.
It's a lame waste of time.

Uncharted 3 pissed me off with this. There is a level where you sneak through an airfield with a silenced pistol. At some point I messed up and got spotted. The game had already saved itself after my screw up, and there was no option to restart the level, so I was stuck going guns-blazing for the rest of the mission.

Another thing I hate is that it seems like developers today care more about targeting and bringing in non-gamers than they do about pleasing the fans they already have. Take the last Zelda, for example. I've already beaten over a dozen Zelda games, so why are you stopping me to explain how bombs work, or what my heart meter means? Why not make a game expecting the person playing to be a gamer, and not a casual or non-gamer who probably won't even finish it? You shouldn't have to tell the player to use the mouse to look around, or use the left stick to move. If they do not fucking know that already, then they have no business being here.

I don't think there's anything wrong with accessibility, and some games, like Fallout 3, do tutorials well. I personally prefer skippable tutorials or tutorials outside the main game. I do think it's a bit unfair that we expect games which were welcoming to us when we were new gamers to change with us instead of letting them continue to welcome new gamers, and moving on to different games if we find it bothersome.

Assuming that everyone wants their games to come packaged with some sort of multiplayer mode, which is totally going to become more popular than CoD or BF, LoL or SC2 and so justify the time/money put into it.

That open-world games are always a step up the evolutionary ladder of gaming, and the myriad of shitty rinse-and-repeat sidequests contained therein can placate someone for how empty and soulless the game otherwise felt.

Tutorials you cannot skip through - and which spend 20 mins teaching you how to move a mouse and click on things.

They're bad, but not as awful as the "let's make the first half of the game tutorial". Black & White taking it to the extreme of having the tutorial end at the start of the final level.

Oh, and RTS games which set up the campaign to give you one new unit / feature every level, because letting you play with all the toys at once would obviously be too overwhelming for your little monkey brain.

Action games which switch to cutscenes without warning no matter what's happening, so you either inadvertently skip it because you're hammering the trigger when it comes in, or you get killed immediately afterwards because it dumps you straight back into the fight without warning.

My personal pet peeve at the moment (thanks to Dungeonland) is locking away everything but the most basic options until the player has performed an arbitrary amount of grinding. Pro-tip developers - if you find yourself having to drip feed content to keep me interested your design has some serious flaws in the end game. Why not work on that instead?

Basically every single Ubisoft game I've played since Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter has had some glaring issue that makes no sense. In R6V and V2 it was the fact that the AI would spawn in rooms you'd already cleared... In a tactical shooter. Therefore removing any remaining trace of tactics (obviously it was massively watered down anyway, but). In Splinter Cell: Conviction, the online modes just refused to work for me and that was also the only Ubisoft game I ever played with the always-on DRM which would never fail to let you know when your connection cut out, but would only register that the connection had come back maybe 40% of the time and wouldn't let you save your game in the 'HANG ON A MINUTE YOU PIRATE YOU TRICKED ME' screen. I have others but it makes for a proper wall of text.

What's the deal with open world games adding arbitrary collectibles with very little reward? GTA got away with it because it gave you a stash of guns in your safehouses, even GTA IV gave you access to a helicopter whenever you wanted it. Hunt feathers to get a cape which will make everyone attack you! Thanks.

Also: Unskippable cutscenes in games that encourage you to re-play them a lot, i.e. Borderlands 2. If they do include a third playthrough in the forthcoming level cap increase I really hope they add the option to ignore all dialogue and cutscenes so you can just get on with it. Twelve playthroughs so far, that will increase to 18 if a third playthrough is added. That's more times than I played through MGS4, which was a 6 hour game.

And then an unskippable intro, combined with the wrong aspect ratio..... GRRRGH.

This.
Makes me furious.
Sam and Max Season 1 is an example. Great game, but it starts off at 800x600 directly to the unskippable intro. It's possible to change the resolution but only aftewards.
OT, no widescreen support. Granted, it's increasingly rare, but there are games that are quite recent that still only suport 4:3 without breaking apart.

You know when you got in game menu and there sign "Press start if you want to play game" then you press it then you get normal menu (Start,load,options,exit..).

How annoying is that -.-

It's a Microsoft requirement so you'll find it in all multiplatform games.

Count me in for tutorials, I've left countless games after just finishing the last one, and wasn't willing to play anymore. Why? dunno. Heck, I even did the Dominions 3 tutorial that you had to read OFF THE MANUAL with a premade savegame and found it funnier than let's say Sword of the Stars. Besides, they teach UI elements instead of how to actually play, for what I have to look for a community guide.